Braun: Why Occupy Wall Street, a movement defined by equality, may be undone by it

NEW YORK — A tale of two parks: At Zuccotti Park, at Liberty Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan, little Vivienne Papaleo, 10 months old, squirmy, giggly and dressed in pink, laughs in her mother Beth’s arms while she plays with the red and yellow chrysanthemums in polished marble planters. Her parents, part of a crowd of hundreds at the Occupy Wall Street protest last week, talk of their lack of health insurance. "We don’t want to be rich," says her father Sebastian, 39, a lawyer who can’t find permanent work, "we just want to be middle class."

Six blocks away, at a much smaller park, a spit of land with no name near the entrance of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, a knot of some 20 grim young people sit on the ground in a circle, barely visible from the street. This is the "direct action working group" of Occupy Wall Street and, in stark contrast to the relaxed transparency at Zuccotti, its meetings aren’t open and its members don’t want to be identified or interviewed or photographed. "I really apologize," says a young man in T-shirt and jeans, "but we’re targeted by the police."

The Papaleos — along with scores of others at Zuccotti, young and old, black and white and brown — represent the virtues and hopes of the protest movement, but the direct action group shows its paranoia and edginess and contradictions and, possibly, the seeds of its failure.

"You can understand they don’t want to show their hand," says Ross Kuhn, a Detroit "multimedia programmer" who flew in just two days earlier to join the protest. These are, after all, the people who plan possibly provocative actions.

Yes, but Wednesday night the provocations of what Tyler Colembic, a spokesman for Occupy Wall Street, called a "splinter group" almost ruined what looked like an unalloyed success — leadership of a mass rally at Foley Square that drew more than 10,000 to demand economic justice, jobs and just plain recognition of their economic pain.

"I pleaded with them to turn back, not to go there — they’re going to ruin everything," says Gabriel Ruiz, a 30-year-old event planner from Queens. "They wouldn’t listen." He was talking about efforts by some to push through barricades at Wall Street after the big rally.

Only a few were arrested, but there was violence. Police used clubs and pepper spray. Within a short time, Zuccotti Park was ringed with more officers than had been seen since the protest began. Police on horseback rode in, and vans used to transport prisoners drove up. Briefly, it looked as if the occupation of the private park was about to end in mass arrests.

Violence would be toxic to the movement, and its organizers know it. "We provide training in nonviolence," says Colembic. "We do not endorse violence."

That’s true, but the nature of the organization itself — many in it use the term "organism" — could prevent it from doing anything beyond talk to stop provocations that could lead both to the alienation of the broad support it needs and, ultimately, to its destruction.

Occupy Wall Street is proudly leaderless and operates by consensus. It has a general assembly to make decisions, but just one member can veto any decision. And who are the members of the general assembly? "Anyone who shows up," says Colembic.

It has no way of preventing "splinter groups" from acting — nor does it want to. Just as it has no way of preventing people who might despise it from getting free meals at its "kitchen" or deranged drunks from waking up sleeping protesters to demand cigarettes at 4 a.m.

Occupy Wall Street can be disingenuous about its "direct action" participants. One member, working at its "info" center, explained it met far from Zuccotti Park because "it’s too crowded here." But clearly this is one group that Occupy Wall Street doesn’t want discussing tactics openly. One spokesman, Bill Dobbs, simply shrugged when asked why the "direct action" group was an exception to its declared transparency.

Clearly, Occupy Wall Street has a core group that has been active from the beginning, a cadre that planned and executed the takeover of one of the few places — a private park open for public use — that could not be closed down by city government fiat. It’s obvious from the careful organization of space inside the area and its control of communication, both inside the media center and out.

Police banned the use of megaphones by protesters, but there is something eerily robotic and disturbing about its so-called "mike checks," their alternate way of communicating. Someone — often a "non-leader" leader — yells "mike check" and everyone grows quiet. He or she will begin to speak. Those words are then repeated by nearby persons and then transmitted, wave-like, throughout the park. Someone is exercising control.

Still, the ability of Occupy Wall Street to transform ideas into action is remarkable.

"They have gone beyond the kind of sectarianism that destroyed other movements," says Eric Seligson, 65, a retired graphic designer from Brooklyn who operates Occupy Wall Street’s rapidly growing library, augmented each day by books donated by supporters throughout the country — along with food, blankets, sleeping bags and medical supplies.

"They have no charismatic leaders, no leaders at all, and no coercion." He says he joined Occupy Wall Street in an effort to help his adult children who, between two of them, have $200,000 in student loans to pay off and no good jobs to provide the money.

So Occupy Wall Street becomes whatever those in the park imagine it is, wish it could be. Young people who want meaning. Unemployed who want jobs. Others seeking justice. It is a light that draws many different kinds out of their fear and resentment and gives them a voice.

"I came because my country lost the compassion that made it great," says Pat Walsh, 69, a civilian nurse injured working for the State Department in Vietnam during the war. She flew in from Colorado to help. The young people in Zuccotti Park call her "Grandma."

"I came because I spent 30 years doing everything I was supposed to do," says Peter Schmutz, 46, of Raleigh, N.C. He says he was laid off as vice president of a publicly traded firm. He hopes the young people will bring change because those "my age can’t seem to do anything."

"I’m not sure why I came," says Fred Pantozzi of Medford, "but I have found friends, I’m coming out of my own seclusion." He’s 21 and, unexpectedly, sings out scales in a rich and trained basso operatic voice. He operates the park’s kitchen, but he also braided the forelock of a new friend who had most of his head shaved by the park’s resident barber.

Young people give the moment energy, humor, spice and an expertise with technology. The "media working group" is at the literal center of the park and is the movement’s heart and brain. Volunteers hunch day and night over laptops, power provided by a gas-fueled generator, streaming the story of the movement live, posting YouTube films, writing Facebook entries.

"We don’t need the mainstream media," says Brendan Burke, 41, a truck driver and member of the media working group’s security — or "de-escalation" team.

The movement emerged from an ungoverned internet. Sites like AdBusters and Anonymous encouraged young people who wanted to emulate actions in Tunisia and Egypt. The Arab Spring became what many here call the American Autumn, a not entirely hopeful phrase.

Some 1960s exotica is here. At the park’s south end, across from the reconstruction site, drums beat almost nonstop. A young woman in a purple sari dances wildly. Others spin in Hula-Hoop demonstrations. They draw a crowd, including ogling construction workers.

They stop and stare, but, while they don’t taunt protesters the way hard-hats did in the 1960s; they also don’t join. Some in Occupy Wall Street hoped a sizable number of the 3,000 construction workers at the trade center would join Wednesday’s protests. They didn’t.

"They’re afraid for their jobs and they don’t trust these kids yet," says Walter Hillegass, 34, of Jackson Heights. He is an unemployed union plumber and a volunteer first-responder who spent a week uncovering bodies at Ground Zero after 9/11.

Hillegass mans the labor table at Zuccotti Park, hoping to recruit more union members. Like others in working groups, he is self-appointed. He also is critical of both the young who provoke police, and the construction workers who won’t add their power to the movement.

"I’m not one of these kids," he says, gesturing his head toward someone playing a Tibetan lute while others do yoga stretches. "I like cops."

He wants Occupy Wall Street to focus less on the kinds of marches and demonstrations that, while drawing national publicity, also could bring unwanted reactions — suppression by police or abandonment by those who, while hurting, are repulsed by violence. He says he believes a small leadership group is directing its actions.

"They’ve got to grow up," says Hillegass.

But many in Occupy Wall Street believe they have grown beyond the politics and ideas of the past. They oppose competition and embrace "open source" technology and sharing of wealth. They oppose party politics and believe in consensus over voting and majority rule. Their roots are in anarchism as well in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements.

"It’s a new paradigm," says Gabriel Ruiz, a religion major from Hunter College, who genuinely believes Occupy Wall Street could start a revolution.

But old paradigms still mean something, not simply to the protest’s detractors, traditional politicians, and the police command, but also to families like the Papaleos, middle-class people like Schmutz, construction workers like Hillegass. The revolution won’t come without them.

Time is not on Occupy Wall Street’s side. Cold weather is coming. The patience of the police, especially command officers, is waning. It has no goals beyond wanting the movement to spread so widely that the evils it — correctly — identifies are swept away.